Reflection
Eleanor S. Lewin
November is filled
With bounty
Autumnal pursuits have
The perspective of long life
Beauty beckons like still wine
To satisfy the eye and soul
Friendships sustain memory
With sublime echoes of
compassionate voices
Time is the frame
For a well lived life
Gloomy Thoughts for the Week
Peter Eisenstadt
There are (for the purposes of this post, at least) two types of war. There are wars that start suddenly and unexpectedly, seemingly with little or no warning. World War I is perhaps the best example of this. On June 27, 1914, the day before the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Europeans were planning their summer vacations. By early August, in all the major European powers, they were marching to war.
The second type of war are foreshadowed for years before the actual fighting begins, and move towards actual hostilities slowly and agonizingly, with the major contenders marshalling their forces, heightening their rhetoric, and counting their grievances before blood is spilled. World War II, or if you prefer to keep Hitler out of it, the American Civil War is the best example of this type of war. Whatever other emotions people had on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, or when General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (love that name!) commenced shelling Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, surprise was low on the list.
Did a Mediocre Letter of Recommendation for Martin Luther King, Jr. Change the Course of History?
By Peter Eisenstadt
Can a letter change the world? A few years ago I found some correspondence that I thought might have profoundly altered the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and thereby redirecting the course of American and world history. And what made it more interesting is that King almost certainly was unaware of what happened. I was doing some research into the life of Howard Thurman, the great mid-20th century African American religious thinker. Thurman has never been as well-known as he should be, and if he is remembered among the general public, it is as an inspiration to Martin Luther King, Jr., which is accurate enough, but somewhat ironic given the contents of the exchange in question.
Thoughts on Finally Seeing Klinghoffer
Peter Eisenstadt
Over the weekend I attended the last performance of “The Death of Klinghoffer” at the Met. I tried, as best as I could, despite reading about 20 reviews of the production, to view it without preconceptions. I must say I came away astonished that anyone could see the opera as Anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli, or in any way condoning Palestinian terrorism. The opera provides the strongest possible condemnation of terrorism, and the terrorists who killed Klinghoffer are depicted as monsters, with their rationalizations for the crimes the rationalizations and self-delusions of monsters.
Choosing Life Over Land in Genesis 13 and in Peace Politics
Following Abraham and Remembering Rabin
Ayala Emmett
October 31, 2014
Yitzhak Rabin Israel’s Prime Minister was murdered by a man who confessed to hate peace, yet claimed to love God. The shooting took place nineteen years ago at a peace rally at the end of the Sabbath known as Shabbat Lech Lecha, Genesis 12-17, the very Sabbath in which Jews in synagogues around the world read the Torah portion that opens with God’s call to Abraham to literally take himself from his home and go to the land that God would show him.
My Father Under The Oxygen Mask Took Hold
Barbara D. Holender
On the Yahrzeit of my father
The taxi arrived for me
at the same moment the paramedics arrived
for him. I want you to leave, he gasped.
Sure, I said, right now I’m leaving the country.
At eight we called the family. At ten,
the doctor asked if we wanted heroic measures.
At two, he struggled to tell me something.
Don’t, I thought, Don’t say goodbye.
I leaned closer. Pay the rent, he wheezed,
Tell Mom it’s the first of the month.
At three the doctor gave him, maybe, six months.
At four my uncle choked back tears.
Hey, you owe me two cents.
I’m broke, said my father,
Loan me two cents so I can pay you.
All that glass
shattered one long ago November night,
can never ever be swept away.
Splinters are pushing into the light of day,
still sharp on all sides.
When sunshine hits these broken pieces,
millions of yahrzeit lights illumine the loss,
while fragments of the rainbow flicker with hope
and the promise of Tikkun Olam.
Gertrud J. Lind
1998-2008
Shadow Play At The Western Wall
Barbara D. Holender
Caperbushes sprout through dry crevices, spattering shade
on stone eighty feet above the congregation.
One chassid among the flock of crows–that one–
dances with himself in prayer,
sways left, now right seven times,
forward thirteen, now seventeen short bows,
again and again, pliant as a lulav,
is shadow advancing, earlocks matching
flying curl for curl, even the fringes
of his tallit, almost even the stripes
sharp in shadow, so clear the light,
so light the air, ah that Jerusalem air.
SUKKOT: The Significance of Water, Land and the Agricultural Cycle
Matia Kam
The festival of Sukkot and the Eighth Day, Shmini Atzeret signify the end of the first month’s festivals in the Jewish calendar and the end of the agricultural year: “the year in Torah is an agricultural one, it begins with seeding, and the first rain.”[1] In Jewish tradition the year begins on Rosh Hashanah, yet in Torah Sukkot marks the end of the agricultural year, and the beginning of new planting cycle. Sukkot is the time of harvest in which farmers gather the crops [Exodus, 23:16]. Preparations for the new seeding of the fields awaken farmers concern about rain, not knowing if the new year would see rain, or would face drought; if there would be rains of blessing or disastrous storms. Accordingly, water rituals were performed in the Temple in Jerusalem on Sukkot, and the prayer for rain is customarily recited on the Eight day (Simhat Torah). The festival of Simhat Torah marks an end and a beginning, the end of a yearly cycle of Torah reading in the synagogue and a beginning in the reading of Genesis.
Bible Students In The Sukkah
Barbara D. Holender
What does it matter
that we are forever looking things up
and forgetting them?
Our minds are like the sukkah:
crowned with evergreen
open to the stars and winds
hung with our best fruits
and reconstructed each year.
The pine boughs shake down sun,
the leaves of our books cast up light,
and all our ancestors
cluster around us, saying
This is who we were
and this is what we did
and this is what it meant.
So it must have been in Pumbedita
in ample Babylon
where our Talmudic fathers
from every jot and tittle
extracted meanings
and over golden dates and wine
discoursed on the family tree